A mistake but not, I hope, catastrophic.

[bernardsmith]

Just started my first batch of wine using whole grapes and so experiencing lots of experiences I have never been exposed to before, including an enormous volume of grapes to liquid and a large volume of fruit pushed up to form a cap that requires to be punched down several times a day. My problem was that I had no good way of using my hydrometer to measure the changing density of the wine as the yeast consumed the sugars. Starting Brix was 25 (an equivalent gravity of about 1.106) but that measurement I took with my refractometer. I've been taking readings, using my refractometer, and plugging the numbers into calculators that I found online. Yesterday, my reading was 10 Brix and the calculator indicated that the gravity (taking account of the alcohol) was .996. So I transferred the wine to a carboy and pressed the grapes. I took a gravity reading this morning and the SG is 1.030 ... Bottom line I removed the wine from the skins days before I needed to. Bummer! But my plan was to use the pressed grapes to make a second wine: I don't have a grape press and so was forced to use my hands to press out what juice I could from these grapes and so I am confident that there is enough flavor in the grapes to extract another couple of gallons of wine.
I added 4 lbs of table sugar and two gallons of spring water together with some tartaric acid and this second wine is now so active (without the addition of any more yeast) that I was forced to punch down the cap that had formed overnight. Hopefully, I will have a drinkable first wine in about 6 -9 months and a drinkable second wine in about 3 months... and so about 7 gallons total from about 72 lbs of grapes... but I hope the color and flavor of the 5 gallon batch will be within tolerable limits even if I removed the grapes after a week and not longer...

 

[videojunkie1208]

You may find your first wine to be a bit light in tannins you should be able to gauge the color, as without the skins, it's not going to get any darker.

 

[bernardsmith]

You may be right about the lack of tannin but I guess I can always tweak that by adding some tannins. The color is hard to determine at this stage because of the amount of fruit still suspended but as it slowly clears the color is becoming darker. The color of Sangiovese wine is supposed to be "coppery" and mine is darker than copper, more like a dark burgandy... The wine was a week on the grapes, so it was not an extensive period but hopefully it will be enough

 

[videojunkie1208]

Tannins are easy to add, devilishly difficult to remove.